Tom Daley

Father’s day June 15, 2008.

I drive to a housing estate on the out-skirts of Plymouth to photograph a 13 year old diver. His Father organises everything with meticulous care; my diary reveals a Sunday and we can only shoot between 1.45 to 2.15pm.

I remember a bright clear sunny day, a trampoline dwarfing the tiny back garden and the small boy with dark intense eyes. After I made a portrait of him, I include his Mum and then the whole family.

Comfortable on their sofa, tactile and intimate, they seemed to represent modern Britain. Free from constraints, hopeful and optimistic.

Over the last 8 years, I’ve marvelled at the man Tom became.

After becoming the youngest British World Champion in any sport, he’s been an advocate against bullying, become a television personality, completed is education and had to deal with the loss of his father who died of cancer in 2011.

At the beginning of October last year, Tom and his fiancé Lance announced that they were engaged to be married. Happily I was asked to do their first shoot as a couple for Out magazine.

It was genuinely lovely to see him again and poignant to give him the family pictures from our first shoot.

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